Priority is claimed on Japanese Patent Application No. 2007-189510, filed Jul. 20, 2007, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a seatbelt device that restrains a passenger seated on a vehicle seat with webbing, in particular, to a seatbelt device for a vehicle provided with a pretensioner mechanism that uses a motor, and a control method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, there has been brought into practical application a seatbelt device for a vehicle in which a motor for rotation-driving a belt reel is provided, and the tension force of webbing is controlled by driving of the motor so as to stabilize the posture of the passenger when an emergency arises or the traveling state is unstable (for example, refer to Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, First Publication No. H06-286581).
In this seatbelt device, there are provided an emergency restraining device that uses an explosive force of an explosive to rapidly pull in the webbing with a significant force when a significant impact caused by a collision or the like is received, and a pretensioner mechanism that uses a motor to pull in the webbing when an imminent collision is detected.
Incidentally, in this conventional seatbelt device, the velocity or torque for pulling in the webbing, and the looseness removal amount are determined by a program pre-stored in a controller. In recent years however, there has been a demand for these settings to be freely fine-adjusted by a user or dealer according to the preference or body shape of the passenger.
However in recent vehicles, many switches of control equipment are already disposed inside the passenger compartment. In such circumstances, it is not preferable to add a dedicated setting switch for a seatbelt device inside the passenger compartment, from the viewpoint that operation of other switches is obstructed, and the design of the passenger compartment is impaired.
Consequently, an object of the present invention is to provide a seatbelt device for a vehicle and a control method thereof, capable of changing the control settings of a motor used for webbing winding, without the need for adding a dedicated setting switch, to achieve a simplified structure of the interior of a passenger compartment.